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<title>Berkeley DB Reference Guide: Introduction to debugging</title>
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<td><b><dl><dt>Berkeley DB Reference Guide:<dd>Debugging Applications</dl></b></td>
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<p align=center><b>Introduction to debugging</b></p>
<p>Because Berkeley DB is an embedded library, debugging applications that use
Berkeley DB is both harder and easier than debugging a separate server.
Debugging can be harder because when a problem arises, it is not always
readily apparent whether the problem is in the application, is in the
database library, or is a result of an unexpected interaction between
the two.  Debugging can be easier because it is easier to track down a
problem when you can review a stack trace rather than deciphering
interprocess communication messages.  This chapter is intended to assist
you with debugging applications and reporting bugs to us so that we can
provide you with the correct answer or fix as quickly as possible.</p>
<p>When you encounter a problem, there are a few general actions you can
take:</p>
<br>
<b>Review the Berkeley DB error output:</b><ul compact><li><p>If an error output mechanism has been configured in the Berkeley DB
environment, additional run-time error messages are made available to
the applications.  If you are not using an environment, it is well worth
modifying your application to create one so that you can get more
detailed error messages.  See <a href="runtime.html">Run-time error
information</a> for more information on configuring Berkeley DB to output these
error messages.</p></ul>
<b>Review <a href="../../api_c/env_set_verbose.html">DB_ENV-&gt;set_verbose</a>:</b><ul compact><li><p>Check the list of flags for the <a href="../../api_c/env_set_verbose.html">DB_ENV-&gt;set_verbose</a> function, and
see if any of them will produce additional information that might help
understand the problem.</p></ul>
<b>Add run-time diagnostics:</b><ul compact><li><p>You can configure and build Berkeley DB to perform run-time diagnostics.  (By
default, these checks are not done because they can seriously impact
performance.)  See <a href="compile.html">Compile-time configuration</a> for more
information.</p></ul>
<b>Apply all available patches:</b><ul compact><li><p>Before reporting a problem in Berkeley DB, please upgrade to the latest Berkeley DB
release, if possible, or at least make sure you have applied any updates
available for your release from the
<a href="http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/db/index.html">Berkeley DB web site</a>.</p></ul>
<b>Run the test suite:</b><ul compact><li><p>If you see repeated failures or failures of simple test cases, run the
Berkeley DB test suite to determine whether the distribution of Berkeley DB you are
using was built and configured correctly.</p></ul>
<br>
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